Accidents happen. No form of transportation is 100% risk free. Any astronaut that agrees to go into space knows the risks involved and does it willingly. You take a risk every time you get in a car or a plane.

And you are talking about the Russian space program having a history of decency? As far as I know they are the only ones that ever shot people into space with full knowledge that they would never bring them back without even telling them.

They knew. Kamarov knew the craft was flawed but didn't remove himself because Gagarin was his replacement and he couldn't bring himself to doom Yuri. Even so, as he burned alive he screamed curses at mission control for their incompetence.

That said, Russia has had an impeccable safety record since the 1980's. Americans have no room to criticize them.

And even when they did kill men back in the '60s, the russians had the decency to give them a nice open casket funeral and send the dumbass engineers that screwed up to siberia. NASA promotes them."

Semi-related, but attached is an interesting case study on the Challenger disaster if anyone wants a brief read - it's in regards to how things went down pre-launch within the various parties involved. Pretty eye-opening/concerning, or at least I thought so.

"Prior to launch, Soyuz 1 engineers are said to have reported 200 design faults to party leaders, but their concerns "were overruled by political pressures for a series of space feats to mark the anniversary of Lenin's birthday."

And just like Komarov, the Challenger crew were absolutely alive and desperately trying to fly the cockpit section when they hit the ground. They had over two minutes of freefall to curse the pencil pushers that killed them.

All of these disasters are the result of one thing...PR. Rushed deadlines and inability to call things off due to bad publicity. This is why I oppose NASA's massive media propaganda efforts. They have a TV channel for crying out loud. If you try to intertwine space travel and patriotism to secure your next government dollar, people will always die.

If anything, private space companies should be more safe. They know that one death will destroy them. They don't have a nation of flag-waving suckers to keep them afloat.

^the people in challenger were unconscious by the time they hit the water and were not frantically doing anything... when challenger exploded the cockpit continued to go higher and at those altitudes people do not stay awake very long.

That wasn't the definitive conclusion of the Challenger investigation, unfortunately. There are signs that at least 3 members of the crew remained conscious and activated their oxygen tanks and made other attempts to resolve the hopeless situation. The crew cabin remained in freefall for at least 2 minutes. If the cabin maintained structural integrity they wouldn't have stayed unconscious and even if it did they may have regained consciousness before it hit the ocean.

I'm wondering when smc is going to declare that we abandon automobiles and commercial airlines, however.

"...later analysis showed that the remaining unused air supply was roughly consistent with the expected consumption during the 2 minute 45 second post-breakup trajectory...

While analyzing the wreckage, investigators discovered that several electrical system switches on Pilot Mike Smith's right-hand panel had been moved from their usual launch positions. Fellow Astronaut Richard Mullane wrote, "These switches were protected with lever locks that required them to be pulled outward against a spring force before they could be moved to a new position." Later tests established that neither force of the explosion nor the impact with the ocean could have moved them, indicating that Smith made the switch changes, presumably in a futile attempt to restore electrical power to the cockpit after the crew cabin detached from the rest of the orbiter."

The crew module was extremely robust, photographed intact on the way down, and likely did survive the explosion without losing pressure.

However the lack of pressurized spacesuits and the removal of ejection seats shows again how little NASA cares about the value of human life. Even the soviets put ejection seats on the Buran space shuttle and did the test flight by remote control(we used two sucker astronauts to test ours, because we were too lazy to develop the ability to fly the shuttle from the ground) Which nation is the evil one again?

^^^Both of these issues are legitimate threats of the american space program. NASA needs all the propaganda help it can get, because it certainly can't seem to compete.

I had no idea that you were an experienced aerospace engineer and therefore have a detailed understanding of the design and analysis cycle that goes behind the development of a new launch vehicle given very limited data.

Hmm, I see the photo of brave Vladimir Komarov's body has been deleted. It seems that you champions of manned space flight can't bear to look upon the consequences. Anything to whitewash the true expense of pointless trips to low earth orbit in the name of patriotism or "mankind". You deny the exorbitant costs, you deny the suffering on earth that those funds could alleviate, and you even deny the gruesome deaths of astronauts at the hands of bureaucrats and politicians.

After the Challenger disaster, NASA was so desperate to avoid letting the press know that intact astronaut bodies existed(they lied for weeks about instant explosive deaths), they moved the bodies in garbage cans in the back of a pickup truck in the middle of the night to a military base so the civilian medical examiner's office(who was required by law to investigate) wouldn't be allowed to perform autopsies.

The characteristic of a true conspiricy theorist is that nothing will ever convince them that the theory is wrong.

I can't believe how transparent the psychological reaction is from these people. It's nonsense to such a degree that they deserve nothing more than ridicule at this point. There's crap there on the moon from the missions there. There's crap from the first mission we sent there, and every other mission. Anyone who believes that a moon landing was faked, any moon landing, should understand very clearly that eventually their theory will be falsified beyond any all doubt. But somehow they allow themselves to think otherwise, which is the truest form of dishonesty, committed against their own mind.

I'm not saying that they're insane. We all experiment with sustained delusions throughout childhood. We hold on to falsities tightly and the more evidence that mounts, the tighter we clench. Eventually though, we give up and allow the incontrovertible reality to change our belief. Some people just didn't grow up in that respect.

^^Indeed. It is my position that NASA should not be in the manned spaceflight business, at least not until the national debt is paid off and we have at least some long-term sustainable plan to feed, house and power our earthbound population. And as I've demonstrated on this page, NASA is a corrupt, political bureaucracy that can't be trusted with the task. All of the real scientific gains come from unmanned missions anyway. Let the scientists and engineers do what they do best, rather than diverting resources to showboating space cowboys for political gain.

If private entities or the Russians/Chinese/Indians want to send folks up, more power to 'em. I would gladly sacrifice our space dominance(whatever that means) in order to put our domestic affairs in order.

"Every aircraft that flies in this country is required to carry what is called an ELT, for emergency locating transmitter. This device is a crash-activated radio beacon that summons aid and provides a precise location if there is a mishap. There was no ELT aboard Challenger. (Nor have they been installed in the remaining shuttles.)

"There was some discussion of it, but it was never acted upon," said James Beggs in a recent interview. "You have to remember, there are severe weight restrictions. Every piece of equipment you add cuts into the payload."

Such a transmitter weighs less than 10 pounds. Among the things that did make the manifest of the Challenger were 700 embroidered mission patches, more than 1,600 flags of various sizes, countries and states, a video disk, an assortment of medallions, a deflated soccer ball, the town seal of Framingham, Mass., 47 copies of the U.S. Constitution and patches, pins, ornaments and assorted other things for organizations that wished to have something that had been in orbit aboard the shuttle. But no locating transmitter."

Quote :

"Another top NASA official suggested to several people that it would certainly be convenient if some of the data just disappeared. Better to stick to the original story, that the astronauts were killed instantly when the shuttle broke up. Some of the investigators were outraged.

One investigator bitterly recalled being told, "We really don't need to know that kind of data. Just lose it."

"There was nothing we could do," says another. "You have to understand our position. This is the only game in town. If space flight is what you do, NASA is where you have to go to do it.

"Nobody liked what was going on, the things we were being asked to do. But you can't go public with it, not if you ever want to work anywhere again. Look at Roger Boisjoly, the guy who blew the whistle on the O-rings. He was right. He was praised as a brave man, a hero. And he hasn't worked since, and probably won't. Because even if he went to work for a different company, the company management would wonder when he would find something wrong with them. Once you get painted with that brush, you're out of a career.""

"I can't believe how transparent the psychological reaction is from these people. It's nonsense to such a degree that they deserve nothing more than ridicule at this point. There's crap there on the moon from the missions there. There's crap from the first mission we sent there, and every other mission. Anyone who believes that a moon landing was faked, any moon landing, should understand very clearly that eventually their theory will be falsified beyond any all doubt. But somehow they allow themselves to think otherwise, which is the truest form of dishonesty, committed against their own mind.

I'm not saying that they're insane. We all experiment with sustained delusions throughout childhood. We hold on to falsities tightly and the more evidence that mounts, the tighter we clench. Eventually though, we give up and allow the incontrovertible reality to change our belief. Some people just didn't grow up in that respect."

I think some people are just PROGRAMMED to be suspicious, stubborn, and believe that someone with more power than them is lying to them. To conspiracy theorists, it's not about evidence or proof....they just want to believe that there's some underlying conspiracy and can't accept fact.

It's really sick in regards to 9/11. Yes, our inept government brought down the towers with controlled demolition. That makes perfect fucking sense and the evidence for that just abounds. HOW CAN THE REST OF YOU NOT SEE IT !!11!JUAN!11!!

It's the sad truth of the entire U.S. government today. An army of cubicle dwellers with no desire to upset the teat from which they suck. If you expect efficiency, competency and safety to result from such a system you must be dreaming.

NASA has failed repeatedly to correct and reform itself after disasters. Aggressive private sector and foreign competition is the only thing that might have a chance to do so. Slashing NASA funding is the best way to save it from itself.

^Ah yes, that's ATK, they make the SRB's that took up the shuttle and will be making the initial SRB's for the shuttle's replacement. That must be a very early concept drawing of Liberty. Either that or it is in some kind of cargo/unmanned configuration as the capsule up top doesn't appear to have an LAS. Either way I'm glad all the work I put into Ares is actually going to do some good.

btw, stay tuned folks, there is supposed to be a major NASA press release later today or tomorrow on what's next for the American space program. I'm not really allowed to go into detail right now but it's kinda cool.

There are already calls for the SLS program to be cancelled, saying that it doesn't reduce the price per pound lifted, will gobble up the entire budget(and more, since it will undoubtedly go over budget[by it's own estimate nasa says $35 billion]) and private investment will be make it obsolete by the time it launches in 2021.